Learn to read Arabic the easy way - Earworms

Now lets get reading some real Arabic words. For the sake of familiarity, lets take themonths. (earworms Rapid Arabic Vol 2.)The months‏,مايو mahyoo ‏,أبريل abreel ‏,مارس maris ‏,فبرايرfebrayir ‏,ينايرyanayir, سبتمبرّ‏ ‘r’) sibtemberr (role the ‏,اغسطس agoostoos ‏,يوليو yulir ‏,يونيو yunirديسمبر disember ‏,نوفمبر noofember ‏,أوآتوبر aooktooberيناير=‏ yaneyirLet’s look at the word ‘yanayir’ under the microscope:ينايرDo you recognise all the letters? No?Apart from being written from right to left, the second hurdle is that whenwritten together in one word, letters often lose their tails and flourishes.Let’s do an experiment to try to separate the letters. You can try thisyourself in a text programme like Word. (See Doc. Arabic months)يناير1. Going from right to left putting a space between the first andsecond letter, ي separates itself so we have:ناير2. Separating the second letter gives us:ي ن ايري3. Separating the third:ير ا ن ي4. until all letters are separate:ر ا ي ن ي5. Reading from the right you can now read: y a n a y i rNotice the ‘a’ after the first y and the ‘i’ after the second y (heregrey) are not actually written!. In most cases in Arabic the (short)vowels which are additional small symbols above and below themain letters are left out; you have to guess them. It’s a bit like SMStexting e.g. “pls rng bck” (Please ring back)